Original Meaning
CONTINUING THE THEME OF HOLINESS, Leviticus 23 turns to the dimension of time, presenting a series of sacred occasions: the weekly Sabbath and yearly festivals. Complementing this sacred calendar, Numbers 28–29 specifies regular daily, Sabbath weekly, “new moon” monthly, and festival yearly sacrifices to be performed on behalf of the entire Israelite community. In this section we will focus on instructions for spring festivals (Lev. 23:5–22), leaving detailed examination of autumn festivals (vv. 23–44) for the next chapter.
The overall structure of Leviticus 23 is as follows:
Overall introduction (vv. 1–2)
Sabbath (v. 3)
Introduction to yearly festivals (v. 4)
Passover and Festival of Unleavened Bread (vv. 5–8)
Elevated Sheaf (vv. 9–14)
Festival of Weeks (vv. 15–21)
Command to leave some of the harvest for the poor and resident alien (v. 22)
Festival of Trumpets (vv. 23–25)
Day of Purgation (vv. 26–32)
Festival of Booths (vv. 33–36)
Conclusion (vv. 37–38)
Festival of Booths (vv. 39–43)
Report of Moses to the Israelites (v. 44)
Notice that there are two introductions to the sacred times.1 The first introduces the chapter as a whole (vv. 1–2); verse 4 reiterates the introduction after the Sabbath command (v. 3). This suggests that although the weekly Sabbath is a sacred time, it is distinguished from the yearly festivals. Note how Genesis 2:2–3 presents Sabbath rest as a creation ordinance (cf. Mark 2:27), by contrast with the rest of the festivals, which originated for the Israelite nation.
In Leviticus 23:2, 4, the festivals are the Lord’s “appointed” or fixed times, which the Israelites are to “proclaim” (Qal of qrʾ ). Therefore, they are designated as miqraʾey qodeš (lit., “proclamations of holiness”; NIV “sacred assemblies”). These special appointments between the Lord and his people are not all “feasts” in the sense of occasions to celebrate with eating. In fact, eating is strictly prohibited on the Day of Purgation (vv. 27, 29, 32; cf. 16:29, 31).
Leviticus 23 attaches the expression “proclamation of holiness” (miqraʾ qodeš) to the weekly Sabbath (v. 3) plus seven yearly festival days. Six of these seven are sabbaths of partial rest, when laborious work involving one’s trade/occupation/business (melaʾkah) is prohibited but other light work (food preparation; see below) is implicitly permitted. The Day of Purgation, however, is like the weekly Sabbath (v. 3) in that it is a šabbat šabbaton (“sabbathly sabbath,” i.e., super-Sabbath [v. 32]), requiring total cessation from all work (vv. 28, 30, 31).
Sacred Occasion | Kind of Rest | “Proclamation of Holiness” |
Weekly Sabbath | Total | v. 3 |
Unleaveaned Bread day 1 | Partial | v. 7 |
Unleaveaned Bread day 7 | Partial | v. 8 |
Festival of Weeks | Partial | v. 21 |
Trumpets | Partial | v. 24 |
Day of Purgation | Total | v. 27 |
Festival of Booths, day 1 | Partial | v. 35 |
Festival of Booths, day 8 | Partial | v. 36 |
Why should holy days be occasions of rest? Although the Creator rested only on the weekly Sabbath (Gen. 2:2–3), at that time he established cessation from work as the way to enact holiness in the dimension of time (v. 3; cf. Ex. 20:11; see below).
Verses 5–8 remind the Israelites to celebrate Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month (Nisan) and the seven-day Festival of Unleavened Bread immediately thereafter (cf. Ex. 12–13; 23:15, 34:18). Exodus 12:16 establishes a paradigm for Leviticus 23 by labeling the first and seventh days of the festival “proclamations of holiness,” when work is forbidden except for food preparation.
Verses 9–21 concern two observances, fifty days apart, that celebrate and implicitly thank God for the beginnings of the barley and wheat harvests, respectively, after they are settled in the Promised Land. First, the Israelites are to bring to the sanctuary the first sheaf of grain that they harvest in the spring, which is undoubtedly barley.2 A priest dedicates the sheaf to the Lord as an “elevation offering” by a gesture of raising it up (vv. 11–12; cf. v. 15; see comments on 7:30). On the same day, the people are required to sacrifice a burnt offering with its grain and drink accompaniments (23:12–13). By giving the Lord a token portion before eating any of the new harvest, they act out “saying the blessing,” acknowledging that the harvest is from him.
Up to this point everything is clear, but on what day is the sheaf to be elevated? Verse 11 specifies: “on the day after the Sabbath” (see also v. 15). But to which Sabbath does this refer—a weekly Sabbath (v. 3) or a ceremonial sabbath belonging to the Festival of Unleavened Bread (vv. 7–8)? Because we are simply interpreting the text of Leviticus, unencumbered by later tradition, the solution seems simple. While these directions come after those for Unleavened Bread, they are in a separate divine speech that begins in verse 9. In verse 10 the timing of elevating the sheaf is tied to the actual beginning of the harvest, the date of which can fluctuate. Therefore, the Sabbath here seems to be the seventh-day weekly Sabbath. Whatever day the Israelites harvest the first sheaf (not including Sabbath, of course), the priest is to elevate it on the following first day of the week, which we call Sunday.
By the Second Temple period, tradition had connected the elevation of the sheaf to the first part of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and a fierce interpretive controversy raged over whether “the day after the Sabbath” meant the first weekly Sabbath after Passover (Nisan 14) or the ceremonial sabbath on the first day of Unleavened Bread, which always came on the Nisan 15 (vv. 6–7).3 The latter interpretation is weaker because verses 7–8 do not use the term šabbat (“Sabbath”) with reference to the partial rest days bracketing Unleavened Bread.
It is difficult for us to appreciate why a ritual detail should generate such a heated fuss. When so many people have a stake in the same ritual, the correct performance of which is deemed crucial for divine favor on the entire nation, the particulars matter. To complicate matters, the timing of the sheaf ritual was the base point for calculating when the subsequent Festival of Weeks was to be observed (v. 15). If the former were incorrect, Weeks would be on the wrong day! That would be like Christmas on December 23 or 27, but worse.
In Leviticus 23 the Festival of Weeks is unlike the other festivals in that it lacks a fixed date (vv. 15–21). This explains why it was necessary to calculate its timing from the elevation of the sheaf, the date of which must float according to agricultural realities. Counting the day when the barley sheaf is elevated as day 1, the Festival of Weeks comes after seven complete Sabbaths (v. 15). Confirmation that “Sabbaths” (pl. of šabbat) in this context mean “weeks” comes from Numbers 28:26, where the usual word for weeks (pl. of šabuaʿ;) refers to the same period of time. The fact that in Leviticus 23:15 “Sabbaths” are weeks buttresses the argument that “the day after the Sabbath” earlier in the same verse refers to the weekly Sabbath rather than a yearly ceremonial rest day.
Exodus 34:22 provides the name for “the [Festival] of Weeks” (pl. of šabuaʿ;), which is further described as “the firstfruits of wheat harvest” (cf. Ex. 23:16; Num. 28:26). The one-day pilgrim Festival of Weeks fell on the day after the seventh Sabbath, that is, Sunday, which would be the fiftieth day according to the customary inclusive reckoning (Lev. 23:16). So it was later called Pentecost (Acts 2:1; 20:16; 1 Cor. 16:8).
For the Festival of Weeks the Israelites were to bring a corporate firstfruits offering of new grain, in this case, from the wheat harvest. The wheat was to be baked in two loaves of leavened bread (23:16–17) and presented along with a group of animal sacrifices (vv. 18–20; cf. Num. 28:27–31). Like the earlier barley sheaf, the two loaves constituted an elevation offering (Lev. 23:17), acknowledging that the Lord provided the harvest.
Some have suggested that the leavened loaves, elevated with two wellbeing offering lambs (23:20), are related to the thanksgiving offering of wellbeing that included cakes of leavened bread (7:13–14).4 It may appear strange to present firstfruits for thanksgiving at the beginning rather than the end of the harvest.5 Yet there is a sense in which a crop ready for harvest represented successful completion of an agricultural growth process, for which the people were grateful to God, on whom they could depend for the rest of the harvest (cf. Phil. 1:6).
Through acknowledging God as the one who sustains the lives of his creatures by giving them food (cf. Ps. 145:15–16), the Israelites honored him as their Creator. Since the weekly Sabbath celebrates creation (Gen. 2:2–3; Ex. 20:11; 31:17), it makes sense that timing the relationship between the sheaf ritual and the Festival of Weeks (Lev. 23:15–16) is saturated with Sabbath connections: (1) Counting begins from the day after the Sabbath, (2) weeks are referred to as “Sabbaths,” and (3) before the Festival of Weeks there are seven Sabbaths/weeks, squaring the sabbatical time unit of seven days: 72 = 7 × 7 = 49 days. We will find further Sabbath-related reminders that God is Creator in connection with the bread of the Presence (24:8) and the sabbatical and Jubilee years (ch. 25).
Because the Festival of Weeks has to do with harvest, 23:22 appends a reminder to leave something for the poor and alien to glean (cf. 19:9–10). Thus, at the heart of Leviticus 23, between instructions for the spring festivals and those of autumn, the Lord commands his people not to get so focused on their lofty religious duties that they neglect human beings in need (cf. Luke 10:30–32). That is, they should not be so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use.
Bridging Contexts
SABBATH AS THE FOUNDATION of sacred time. Because Leviticus 23 is about holy occasions, it logically begins with the foundation of all sacred time: the weekly Sabbath (v. 3), which the Lord instituted at creation by his archetypical cessation (Qal of šht) from work (Gen. 2:2–3). While nothing in Genesis 2 explicitly tells us that the Sabbath has been made for human beings or is a cyclical event, these factors are clear from the context. By blessing the seventh day and making it holy (Gen. 2:3), God has bestowed on it a special relationship to himself, who alone is intrinsically holy (cf. 1 Sam. 2:2). Elsewhere in the Creation story, it is clear that God set up Planet Earth for the benefit of his creatures, not to make human beings work while he rested (contrast the Old Babylonian epic Atraḫasis).6 This implies that the blessing of Sabbath was for the benefit of human beings from the beginning, as Jesus explicitly declared (Mark 2:27).7 In order to receive the blessing, human beings made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27) emulate him by consecrating the day as he did: by altering their behavior.8
Because what God did on the first six days of creation had ongoing earthly results, we expect the same to be true of the Sabbath within the framework of cyclical time that he set up (cf. 23:14–18).9 The idea that God was “refreshed” (NRSV) as a result of his Sabbath rest (Ex. 31:17) supports the conclusion that he intended it to be an ongoing observance. Although he does not become weary as humans do (e.g., Ps. 121:4), Exodus speaks of him anthropomorphically as receiving a benefit of refreshment in order to encourage people to follow his example, as a result of which they gain relief for themselves, their human dependents, and their work animals (cf. Lev. 23:12).
The absence of any explicit command concerning Sabbath-observance prior to Moses does not relegate the Sabbath principle to temporary legislation of the law-epoch. The creational character of God’s sabbath-blessing must be remembered. From the very beginning, God set a distinctive blessing on the Sabbath. . . .
God blessed man through the Sabbath by delivering him from slavery to work. . . . 10
When Adam and Eve sinned by showing disloyalty to God (Gen. 3:6), their marriage and work suffered from the curse of evil (3:16–19), but the Sabbath institution remains unaffected by the Fall—a little piece of Paradise.11 Like a lily in a swamp, its luster is enhanced by contrast with the decay all around it. Enshrining holiness in the dimension of time, which structures human life but is indestructible by human beings, was a stroke of divine genius to preserve amidst profane forgetfulness the sacred memory of the way we were meant to be. Abraham Heschel wrote regarding the weekly temple of time:
Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.12
Sabbath, festivals, and temporary “types.” According to the Bible, basic Sabbath rest for human beings originated before the Fall into sin (Gen. 2:2–3; see above). Hence, it preexisted and was independent from the need for ceremonial “types”/symbols that God set up as a result of the Fall in order to lead human beings back to a positive relationship with him. Thus, although the Israelite ritual system honored the Sabbath with special rituals performed on this day (Lev. 24:8; Num. 28:9–10), their fulfillment and cessation does not affect the timelessness of the Sabbath. Because the weekly Sabbath has never been either a “historical/horizontal type” or a “vertical type,” it fundamentally differs from the Israelite sanctuary and its ceremonial system, in which enactments of typical/symbolic significance constituted the essence of observance.
A “historical/horizontal type” prefigures or preenacts a later and greater reality that constitutes its “antitype.” When the antitype commences, the type recedes into obsolescence.13 Thus, according to the book of Hebrews, the Israelite ceremonies served as a “copy and shadow” of later and greater realities: the truly effective sacrifice and perfect Melchizedek priesthood of Christ (e.g., Heb. 8:5–6). The earthly sanctuary system had serious limitations, just as an automobile prototype is not the same as a regular production car. Nevertheless, a prototype is important for showing how something will work when it is fully developed, when “the rubber hits the road.”
The festivals were major milestones in the yearly spiritual journey of covenant Israel as the people connected worship of God with his historical and/or agricultural goodness on their behalf. In the New Testament, the spring festivals are interpreted as historical harbingers/types of events ushering in the “new covenant” era. First Corinthians 5:7 states: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” Thus, Paul metaphorically identifies Christ, who was slain at the Passover season (John 19:14), as the Victim whose role for the deliverance of his people was analogous to the ritual function of an animal that was sacrificed for deliverance from divine judgment when the Lord rescued his people from Egypt (Ex. 12).
Notice three aspects of Paul’s statement. (1) The New Testament terminology explicitly refers to the ritual of Passover to explain the function of Christ’s sacrifice. To arrive at this connection, there is no need for the Christian to speculate. (2) Christ is “our Passover lamb,” that is, the ultimate Lamb for all Christians. His sacrifice of himself is far greater than a ritual using an animal victim, which served only a household (Ex. 12:3). (3) Tightening the connection between Passover and Christ, the Passover timing of his death correlated with his Passover function.
Moving from Christ’s death to his resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15:20 affirms: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Here Paul explains Christ’s resurrection by explicitly referring to another familiar scenario: A ritual offering of new grain at the beginning of the harvest (Lev. 23:11). His point is that Christ’s one resurrection preceded the resurrection of many people, just as the firstfruits offering of a sheaf of grain at the beginning of the barley harvest came before the harvest of countless other sheaves.
Again, timing correlates with function: Christ’s greater rising from the dead occurred on the day after the Sabbath (John 20:1), when a priest was to ritually raise up and thereby dedicate the first sheaf of barley (cf. Lev. 23:11). It so happened that the Sabbath immediately before Christ’s resurrection was a megale (“great, high”) day (John 19:31), which meant that the weekly and ceremonial Sabbaths coincided that year. So neither side in the Jewish debate over “the day after the Sabbath” (Lev. 23:11, 15) would have an excuse to disbelieve.
Fifty days after elevation of the first barley sheaf, a firstfruits offering of wheat was presented to the Lord at the sanctuary/temple on the Festival of Weeks (Lev. 23:16–20). So it is not surprising to find that fifty days after Christ’s resurrection, the next great event for the early church—the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as a gift from the newly inaugurated heavenly High Priest (cf. Eph. 4:8) and consequent commencement of a great “harvest” of conversions—came precisely on the Festival of Weeks, that is, the day of Pentecost (Acts 2).
By contrast with the yearly festivals, the weekly Sabbath never served as a ritual harbinger/type of a later and greater reality that takes its place for Christians. It is true that in Hebrews 4:1–11 God offers a total life “Sabbath-rest” experience to those who believe, but this does not supersede the literal weekly cessation from work. God also offered the total life kind of rest to people in Old Testament times, as Hebrews acknowledges by referring to Psalm 95:7–11, where “the reason why these men did not gain entrance was their own unbelief, not any failure on God’s part to have the Rest ready.”14 The fact that both the seventh-day Sabbath and the “rest” of Hebrews 4 can have valid function in the same era proves that one is not a type of the other.
At first glance Colossians 2:16–17 appears to include Sabbath among “shadows,” that is, temporary historical types. However, in this verse, the words (lit.) “a festival or a new moon or S/sabbath(s)” provide a clear inter-textual link by inverting the order found in Numbers 28–29 (cf. Ezek. 45:17; Hos. 2:11), where the calendar of ritual offerings on holy days includes special sacrifices on weekly seventh-day Sabbaths (Num. 28:9–10), monthly new moons (28:11–15), and yearly festivals (28:16–29:40).15 In question is not Sabbath rest, but rituals performed on the Sabbath, which functioned as typological “shadows” within the Israelite worship system.16 Apparently reinforcing this interpretation is addition of the noun meros in the latter part of the list in Colossians 2:16, which literally reads: “in (en) eating and in (en) drinking or in [the] part of [en merei]17 a festival or a new moon or sabbaths.” It is that which concerns or pertains to the festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths that constitutes the “shadow.” In other words, Paul is saying that Christians are not accountable for showing that they accept the ongoing validity of an earthly ritual system in any form.
The weekly Sabbath was never a temporary “vertical” type of divine heavenly rest in the way that the Israelite sanctuary down on earth corresponded to God’s temple up in heaven (Ex. 25:9; Heb. 8:5; cf. Ps. 11:4). Just because human beings are to imitate God in some way does not indicate the existence of a temporary vertical type. For instance, 1 Peter 1:16 repeats for Christians the timeless call of Leviticus 11:44–45 (cf. 19:2) to be holy as God is holy. More directly to the point, in Genesis 2:2–3 God originally rested on the seventh day in connection with his creation of Planet Earth. There is no hint that earthly Sabbath copied heavenly Sabbath or that the significance of earthly Sabbath has ceased in favor of heavenly Sabbath as priestly ministry at the earthly temple has been superseded by the function of God’s original temple in heaven (Heb. 7–10).18
Contemporary Significance
SABBATH AND THE PRIVATE world order. In addition to keeping people in touch with God as they celebrate the birthday of the world that was formed and is sustained by his hand, the weekly Sabbath meets an innate human need. G. MacDonald observes:
There can be little order in the private world of the human being when there is no appreciation for the meaning and pursuit of genuine rest, a cessation, as Wilberforce called it, in the routines of our times. From the beginning of all history, it has been an axiom at the base of healthy living; unfortunately, it is a principle badly misunderstood by those whose lives are driven to achievement and acquisition.19
MacDonald refers to William Wilberforce from England, who was a member of Parliament in the early nineteenth century. When Lord Addington became prime minister and was forming a new cabinet in 1801, Wilberforce became obsessed with the possibility that he could become a cabinet minister. He found that his ambition was damaging his inner well-being, but when he observed his regular, weekly day of rest, he found a healing corrective to his perspective.
The Christian politician’s journal tells the story best, in its entry at the end of that week of furious fantasizing and temptations to politic for position: “Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size. Ambition is stunted.” (italics added)20
With spiritual perspective came strength, stamina, social conscience, and moral courage. Some years later, after fighting an uphill battle for nearly twenty years to construct a coalition of lawmakers, the same Wilberforce led Parliament to outlaw slavery in the British empire. His role in leading England to this historic decision “may have been one of the greatest and most courageous acts of statesmanship in the history of democracy.”21 Is it surprising that it took a man who understood God’s weekly blessing of deliverance from slavery to work to champion the cause of freedom from slavery?
MacDonald ponders the fact that in spite of the five-day work week and more leisure time than ever, overwork, fatigue, and burnout are more rampant than ever. He suggests that contemporary people may have lost their comprehension of true rest from work, which God built into the rhythm of creation to allow for reflection on the meaning and mission of life and work in relation to him.
This rest was not meant to be a luxury, but rather a necessity for those who want to have growth and maturity. Since we have not understood that rest is a necessity, we have perverted its meaning, substituting for the rest that God first demonstrated things called leisure or amusement. These do not bring any order at all to the private world. Leisure and amusement may be enjoyable, but they are to the private world of the individual like cotton candy to the digestive system. They provide a momentary lift, but they will not last.22
Ironically, one of the greatest blessings of the commandment to abstain from work on the Sabbath is the very fact that the Bible presents it as an absolute requirement. A goal-oriented, driven, “type A” workaholic needs it to be a command from the Lord himself, thundering from Mount Sinai, or he or she will rest-lessly continue to work and thereby incur damage from burnout.23 It is an immense relief to halt work for twenty-four peaceful hours in order to enjoy God through church, family, and walks in the woods or by a lake without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt for doing so!
Obeying God’s command in order to receive his blessing of genuine Sabbath refreshment is not legalism. In the preface to her profound and down-to-earth book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting, Marva Dawn points out: “To keep the Sabbath is not a legalistic duty. Rather, living in accordance with our own natural rhythm gives freedom, the delight of one whole day in every seven set apart as holy.” Then she extends an invitation: “Come with me into the experience of observing the Sabbath, and you will discover for yourself—or rather, in yourself—the meaning of holy time.”24
While Sabbath is a special day of worship, it does not need to be crammed with formal religious events. A layman remarked after a particularly long day of church activity, “I’m sure glad that there is only one rest day per week, I’d burn out if we had to go through two ‘days of rest’ like this every seven days.”25 Rather than an exhausting marathon, from which it takes several days to recover, we need the regular benefit of true Sabbath refreshment. “The world and the church need genuinely rested Christians. . . . When a godly rest is achieved, you will see just how tough and resilient Christians can actually be.”26
But how can we afford to give up an entire day of work? Well, how can we afford not to? Marva Dawn tells of a wagon train headed for Oregon, which stopped once a week for the pioneers to observe Sabbath. As the approach of winter made speed an urgent priority, the wagon train split into two groups: those who thought it best to continue seven days a week and those who wanted to go on keeping Sabbath. The latter group reached Oregon first because they and their horses could travel further in six days, with a day of rest in between, than the others could in seven days without such a break.27 Sabbath provided a physical advantage, and the same benefit of enhanced efficiency also applies in other areas of life (e.g., spiritual, mental, social) that may be crucial to our success and well-being.
Pilgrimage, unity, and prayer. Of the yearly festivals listed in Leviticus 23, three required all Israelite males to make pilgrimage (ḥag) to the sanctuary (cf. Ex. 23:14–17; 34:22–23): Unleavened Bread (including Passover the night before), Harvest (= Weeks), and Ingathering (= Booths). This periodic worship at the sanctuary for powerful national religious events was designed to give the Israelites “a recalibration of the spirit,”28 enabling them to maintain their connection with God, solidarity with each other, and historical roots. In later times, all kinds of human failures prevented fulfillment of God’s ideal for his people, but even in one of those failures we see the unifying power of pilgrimage: When Jeroboam I pulled out of the Davidic monarchy with the ten northern tribes, he was so alarmed by the potent pull of pilgrimage to Jerusalem in Judah, which threatened the success of his secession, that he set up counterfeit, idolatrous worship systems in his own territory (1 Kings 12:26–33).
New Testament Christianity knows no Christian holy place on earth to which we should direct our prayers and make pilgrimage. Many of us have experienced the candles and smelled the incense in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other Christian shrines in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. Such places are of great historical interest and evoke pungent connections with the life of Christ. However, his presence does not reside at any of these locations in the way that the divine Shekinah abode at the Israelite sanctuary. So our tours of the “Holy Land” are inherently different than Israelite pilgrimages to the sanctuary/temple. Our church services are analogous to weekly synagogue worship in a variety of locations that originated after the Jews were scattered during the Babylonian captivity.
So what holds Christians together? Hebrews 10:19–22 identifies a central place to which all Christians are invited by faith:
Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (NRSV)
God’s temple in heaven is the only place to which we can legitimately make pilgrimage because it is where he resides and where Christ ministers for us. If we are tempted to feel cheated out of an earthly holy place to which we can journey every now and then, we should ponder the tremendous advantage of a worship center that is only a prayer away. We can visit it several times a day even more easily than a web site! As our prayers converge on God’s heavenly headquarters, our hearts are drawn to each other wherever we are located. Martin Luther advised his barber to say “Amen” firmly at the end of his prayers, and explained:
Never think that you are kneeling or standing alone, rather think that the whole of Christendom, all devout Christians, are standing there beside you and you are standing among them in a common, united petition which God cannot disdain. Do not leave your prayer without having said or thought, “Very well, God has heard my prayer; this I know as a certainty and a truth.” That is what Amen means.29
Lack of earthly holy places preempts a plethora of problems for Christians. We have no need to fight with another group over use of some real estate, such as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—regarded as holy by different religious traditions. It is appalling how many people throughout history have suffered and died in religious disputes and crusades over “holy” places. The hemorrhage of murder, rape, and pillage in the name of “religion” gushes on unabated.
One “holy” hot spot is at the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, where Hindu militants destroyed a four hundred-year-old mosque in 1992 because it was built on the site where many Hindus believe that their god Ram was born. In March 2002, when a group of Hindu pilgrims was returning by train from Ayodhya, where they had participated in rituals intended as preliminary to building a temple where the mosque had been, a Muslim mob attacked the train with stones, knives, and gasoline, burned the coaches in which pilgrims were traveling, and murdered 58 Hindus, mostly women and children. In retaliation, local Hindu leaders gave orders to destroy all Muslims, whereupon a mob of 2,000 armed with sticks, stones, and containers of gasoline went on the hunt for Muslims, whom they murdered, burned, and raped.30 All this hate was in the name of holiness.
What a relief for Christians that we can make pilgrimage on the wings of prayer rather than by train!